


I Saw The World Burn

by AtLeastWeWontBeLonelyInHell



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: (light) smut, Angst, Dark, F/M, dark&twisty, might be trigger-ish, season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:40:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26281291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtLeastWeWontBeLonelyInHell/pseuds/AtLeastWeWontBeLonelyInHell
Summary: When Jessica leaves town, Aaron tells her to take Jack with her. Just for a while, he assures her and promises himself that it's for the best.
Relationships: Aaron Hotchner/Emily Prentiss
Comments: 10
Kudos: 31





	I Saw The World Burn

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing; everything belongs to its rightful owners.
> 
> And a BIG special thank you goes to the amazingly talented purpleplasticpurse for beta reading!

**.**

**I Saw The World Burn**

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**.**

_"You can always say stop." - Gil Grissom, CSI Vegas_

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**.**

When Jessica leaves town, Aaron tells her to take Jack with her. _Just for a while_ , he assures her and promises himself that it's for the best.

**.**

* * *

**.**

**.**

Pity is what he finds in Emily's eyes when she shows up out of nowhere. She materializes in the doorframe to his office so suddenly that for a moment, he's certain he's only imagining her.

"What are you still doing here?"

 _I could ask you the same,_ he thinks but doesn't. It's not like he cares.

"Let me take you home," she offers and there's so much sympathy in her voice, so much compassion, it makes him sick.

"What are you doing here?" he wants to know after all, his voice thick and slurred and his movements slightly unsteady when he gets up from behind his desk.

Emily doesn't answer, her expression blank and left of any emotion. Aaron tries to remember what Haley would have done.

_She would have cried and yelled and accused me of ruining her life._

And he had ruined her life. Hers and Jack's. _Theirs._ He'd ruined everything. His job had.

_She only died because of me._

"I think you've had enough," Emily states, a shadow passing her face along with the hint of disappointment and for a second he's back in his house. The woman in front of him is not Emily, but Haley, all furious and angry, her words still ringing in his ears.

_A happy life just isn't enough for you._

"No," he says, slowly crossing the room. "I don't think I have." It sounds cruel, but Emily doesn't even blink. Her dark eyes watch him unperturbed.

"You shouldn't be here," he mutters, and yet he doesn't fight her when she reaches for his glass.

"You shouldn't either."

"That's none of your business."

"No," she admits, and there's a smile ghosting her lips. "But it will be if you get yourself fired."

"Isn't that what got you here in the first place?" he wonders, a familiar anger flooding his veins. He steps closer, his eyes searching hers.

Emily chuckles. "You think I'd be satisfied with that?"

"No," Aaron replies, moving forward until there's just no space between them. "I think you're too spoiled to be satisfied with anything."

"Am I?" she taunts, her words nothing but a challenge and he's too far gone to think straight.

He has her cornered against the window with force and either he's not that drunk after all or she lets him.

He wants her to stop him, the voice in his head begging him _and her,_ not to cross this line. _But she fucking doesn't, a_ nd he can't.

When he wakes up the next morning on the couch in his office, the smudged fingerprints on the window are the only evidence left.

**.**

(He already regrets it.)

**.**

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**.**

He sells his apartment and moves back into the house only a week later.

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**.**

In Texas he walks into a building without waiting for backup.

It's selfish and _fucking stupid_ , something that's so unlike him, that by the time someone notices him missing, it's already too late.

He's about to drink himself to sleep later that night in the privacy of a hotel room when Emily finds him.

"Ever heard of knocking?" he mutters, not really expecting an answer, but yet taken aback when she stays quiet.

Her expression is blank, giving nothing away and he's faintly aware that where his suit is wrinkled, she looks as untouched as ever.

"If you're not here to yell at me then what are you here for?" he wonders, when he can't stand the silence any longer. It's quick, but he notices the flicker of amusement in her eyes anyway.

"There are easier ways to get yourself killed," she states bluntly, her hand reaching for the bottle on his nightstand.

"What makes you think I'm trying to kill myself," Aaron muses, while motioning for her to refill his glass for him.

To his surprise Emily complies, leaving yet another one of his questions unanswered and Aaron can't stop thinking that she's nothing like Haley.

She's about to take a sip straight from the bottle, when he grabs her wrist. Emily stops, her eyes finding his.

There's nothing there, her eyes so unnaturally black, offering him nothing but a never ending darkness.

_An absolution he doesn't deserve._

"What do you want?" he mutters, his voice deep and hoarse and all wrong. He shouldn't be looking at her like that.

Again there's no answer, her lips curling into a faint smile, and he finds himself unable to tear his gaze away.

It's he who pulls her closer, but it's all her when she goes for his zipper with steady hands.

The bottle breaks on the floor along with his glass, neither one of them bothering with the broken shards on the soaked carpet.

**.**

(Not that it matters.)

**.**

**.**

* * *

**.**

The walls get painted over, the floorboards changed but in his mind they're still soaked, the walls still stained with blood.

**.**

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**.**

Days turn into weeks and weeks into months.

Jessica keeps calling him, but he never answers. There's no point in talking. And he doesn't want to admit that Haley had been right all along.

"You should call Jack," Emily suggests one night on a flight back to Washington.

He looks up from his cell phone, meeting her gaze from where she's sitting right across from him.

"What would you know about that?" he asks, his voice strained.

She blinks, a shadow crossing her features, before she gives a slight shake of her head.

"Nothing," she says, moving to get up from her seat. "I know nothing."

He reaches for her from over the table, his hand closing tightly around her wrist. She stills and he stops, his eyes locked with hers.

He's not prepared for the pain he finds, but he can't tell if it's hers or just a _perfect_ reflection of his own.

It doesn't matter to him either way.

He _fucks_ her in the small bathroom of the BAU jet with his hand pressed against her mouth to keep her quiet. It's pathetic.

"You're on the pill, right," he asks when they're done, his forehead pressed against hers. Holding her just a little too tight. The last thing he needs is yet another child. And he should have asked her weeks ago, but-

"I'm not," she answers and Aaron pulls away from her and as far as the small room allows it.

She straightens her clothes, her eyes briefly fixed on the missing button of her blouse and he reaches for her again, barely thinking when he fastens his hold.

"I _can't_ get pregnant anymore," she says, her voice tainted with something he doesn't want to understand. "It's impossible."

His grip tightens, but Emily doesn't even flinch. She's going for his belt instead, the rage in her eyes almost matching his.

**.**

(Not that he cares.)

**.**

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* * *

**.**

He tries to remember. But in the end it all blurs together. Haley and Jack, _them,_ him and her and _everything_ that's ever been there to begin with.

**.**

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**.**

"Go home," he tells her a few days later when she shows up on his doorstep in the middle of the night.

But she's just as drunk as he is, and he takes a step back to let her in after all.

"How can you live here?" she wonders, her voice slightly slurred when she makes her way through the hallway and into the living room, heading straight for the bar.

"I can't," he answers unnecessarily, watching her from the doorframe when she pours herself a drink.

"Then what are you doing here?" she asks and turns, sauntering through the room as if she belongs.

She's wearing a black little dress he's never seen her wear before, her lips painted a dark deep red. It looks like blood.

"Why are you here?" he asks, watching her every movement.

"I don't know," she says, her eyes finding him from across the room. She looks calm, all put together and _achingly beautiful._ Not that it matters of course.

"Maybe you should just leave then."

"Maybe,"

"There's nothing here for you," he tells her and watches as she comes closer and closer until she's so _fucking close,_ he can taste the bourbon on her breath.

"What are you waiting for?" she prompts and it's the only permission he needs.

They stumble through the room in a drunken haze, crashing into the nearest wall together. When he bends down to kiss her, she tastes like blood.

There's no reason to be quiet, his house dark and empty, and he makes her moan and scream and cry until every sound blurs into one.

He catches the flicker of _life_ flash in her eyes, when he grabs her tighter and he pushes her higher, _fucks her harder,_ tethering on the edge far longer than necessary. He pushes her over the edge once, _twice_ and then again, before he follows her short, his body the only thing keeping them both upright.

It's her who pulls away first.

**.**

(Not that he gives a fuck.)

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He thinks about setting the house on fire, about burning it down to the ground and leave nothing but ashes behind.

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**.**

She goes down on him in his office in the middle of a work day and he returns the favor a few days later when they get stuck in an elevator in Miami.

_It's insane._

They almost get caught in Louisiana where he _fucks_ her pushed back up against a tree behind the police station.

 _This is as far as it gets,_ he tells himself, his eyes locked with hers. But then the footsteps disappear and they're alone again, and he just can't resist the urge to destroy what's left of his life.

There are no rules, no boundaries. It's nothing and yet it's something. Always close to the edge.

"Why do you keep coming back?" he asks her one night, when she strolls into his house like she owns it.

"I don't know," she tells him bluntly, settling down on the couch with a drink in her hand. "Maybe I'm just as masochistic as you are."

"I'm not a masochist," he starts and Emily frowns.

"No?" she regards him with a long look, a toxic smile on her lips. "I must have imagined it then." She takes a sip from her glass before she gets back up, seduction in every movement. It's enough to make him snap.

"What about you?" He grabs her roughly, walking her backwards against the nearest wall. "How _self-destructive_ and _desperate_ are you?"

Brushing a strand of dark, silk hair out off her face, he feels her body tremble under his touch, already longing for the only thing he has left to give. "What happened to you, that you want to get punished for so _fucking_ badly?" he asks and with his lips close against her ear he adds: "What did you do, _Emily_?"

He's forced backwards almost instantly and he lets her concede, waits until she's reached the front door before he follows.

He grabs her again, only to push her back against the hallway mirror so hard that the surface cracks.

There's the flicker of relief, her dark eyes glistening feverishly in the dim light. When she reaches for his hand to guide it between her legs, he obliges.

"I hate you," she breathes the second his fingers brush against her bare skin and he nods: "Good."

Their despair is a perfect match.

**.**

(Maybe one day he'll care enough to listen.)

**.**

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**.**

He wishes he could remember _her_ smile or _his_ laughter. Wishes he could remember how happy they had been once. But all remembers is destruction and _him_ , tearing them apart.

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**.**

"This has to stay between us," she states a few days later, straight forward and without as much as a blink and he's glad because he doesn't have the strength to tell her the truth.

They're in his office again and all he can think about is _taking_ her right there on his desk. His mind is longing for the relief even more so than his body.

It's become a habit, him and her, a dangerous habit neither one of them seems willing to quit.

"No one can know," she breathes, nothing but darkness in her eyes, and Aaron nods before he grabs her again.

Some things just aren't meant to be.

_But they are._

"This isn't going to end well," she tells him later from her place on the couch, a stack of case files spread out on the table in front of her. She looks undisturbed when she says it. Her hair and her make up still perfectly done, her clothes unwrinkled. Pristine as ever.

He says nothing, only watches her from over the rim of his glass.

He's not drunk, but he's not quite sober either. Just another habit he's not willing to quit.

He watches quietly as Emily falls asleep and he has to fight the sudden urge to go and get her a blanket. Even when it's just a blanket, that one little gesture would be enough to imply that he cares.

And he doesn't.

**.**

(He never will.)

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There's only death left to linger in what has been a home once. Pain and tragedy and a thousand broken promises stuck under a blood stained roof.

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_"So can you." - Lady Heather, CSI Vegas_

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End file.
